Queer Monsters and Colonial Fantasies: Fantomah at the Dawn of the Superhero

• In Event: Challenging Gendered Spaces: Super/Heroes and Colonialism

Abstract

This paper looks at the earliest woman superhero in American comic book history, Fletcher Hanks’ “Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle,” through the promising lens of critical queer politics. I argue in particular that by reading Hanks’ idiosyncratic, transgressive (and sometimes bizarre) art style and storytelling techniques alongside theoretical reflections on colonial fantasy from Frantz Fanon, Jasbir Puar, and Chandan Reddy, the character of Fantomah shows how “queer monsters,” while breaking down some normative political structures and power-relations (i.e., heteropatriarchy and, arguably, anthropocentrism), ultimately re-instantiates others—most directly, white supremacy and colonial domination.

To demonstrate my argument, I consider the way that, in Hanks’ art Fantomah is, at a few points in the several examples of her stories, uncannily, physically two. That is, her presence is doubled—the art shows a kind of doppelgänger echo, with one “normal” image and one skull-faced (and sometimes but not always blue-skinned) image. A bizarre interruption of contemporary “jungle girl” genre routines, I argue this depiction is a sort of multi-headed genderqueer monster, blending sexual appeal and a weird, affective sense of terror.

While that sense of weirdness provides affective liveliness and vitality, showing us some compelling possibilities of queer visual representation, when considered in the context of the broader “jungle” (i.e., colonial) narrative, some serious political limitations are revealed. Following writers in the “queer of color critique,” then, I argue that expanding boundaries of queer political power—when constructed in culture, and even in ephemeral objects like early comic books—can come to recapitulate, gird, and defend other oppressions. I conclude with a reflection on the politics appreciating Fantomah's apparently transgressive aesthetic, her "rediscovery" by influential cartoonists and comics industry insiders, and the dangers of linking queer representation to ascendent white supremacist authority.

Author

• Joshua Plencner, SUNY Oswego